Trenton eyes hiring back 50 cops

TRENTON — With more than four months remaining this year, the capital city broke the murder record, a sobering statistic to many.

To address the issue of a depleted police force and the rampant crime, city officials introduced a budget Tuesday night that would approve nearly $2 million funding to hire 50 more officers.

“I think we all realize we need to have more police officers on the street,” Trenton Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. said Tuesday. “I’m confident if it can be done, they’ll make it happen.”

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The director recently blamed the crime issues the city is facing on the lack of manpower from layoffs of 105 officers two years ago and the loss of 40 officers through attrition.

The results of increased patrols are already being seen in the city with no homicides reported so far this moth.

In mid-August — the same day two Trenton officers were injured in a shootout — the state announced an initiative called TIDE, which is a surge in deployments of state troopers to crime-ridden areas in the city.

The program, however, is a temporary fix, and was only expected to last a month.

Last week, authorities declined to say if the program was extended, but Rivera said it has proven a point.

“The more officers you have on the street, the more visibility, the more officers you have interacting with the public,” Rivera said. “This is what we need.”

The city hopes to fill the police officer positions by Dec. 1, but Rivera said there are many variables to the hiring process.

The city could hire the officers through intergovernmental transfer, off the Rice list (officers laid off from other departments in the state), or by producing a new recruit class, which would be the lengthiest process, Rivera said.

The effort to bring back officers is being fueled by an unexpected surplus of $5.2 million from the prior fiscal year.

Estimates provided by the city show each hire at the beginning pay level is expected to cost $67,850 for the 2014 fiscal year for salary, health benefits and medicare. The total cost of the officers is expected to cost nearly $2 million with an increase of $1.7 million for the 2015 fiscal year.

In May, city council members shot down a proposal to bring back 12 more police officers using in part funding from a federal grant. Council members cited the failure of Mack’s administration to show them how the city would be able to match the funding, which was a requirement of the grant.

Councilman Alex Bethea, who was the one member to vote in favor of the grant, said he was disappointed the city didn’t act.

“I’m just disappointed we didn’t have a little bit more foresight going forward,” Bethea said Tuesday. “Just a few months, I think that would have given us an opportunity to get additional police money with the proposed grants.”

Eight months into his tenure, Rivera made one of his most highly-criticized moves when he disbanded the city’s two Tactical Anti-Crime units, used for defense against gang violence, drugs and street-level emergencies, in favor of opening two precincts.

On Tuesday, Rivera declined to say if he would reinstate the units if provided more officers, despite previously stating he would “absolutely not” bring back the TAC units.

“I think we have to wait and see, take it one step at a time,” he said.

City finance officials called the introduced budget of $181.6 million — a decrease of $18.1 million from the previous year’s budget — the best one they have ever presented.

It calls for a tax hike of 5 percent, which equates to an annual increase of $190 for a home assessed at $100,000.

But that is expected to significantly drop once the city receives state transitional aid.

About the Author

Originally from Webster, N.Y., David has been a reporter in N.J. for the past three years (first in Phillipsburg and now in Trenton).He is a Temple alum who interned at the Philadelphia Daily News. Reach the author at dfoster@trentonian.com
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